Introducing IBM Watson to all call center desks and beginning use in internal inquiry response operations

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (President: Takeshi Kokube, hereinafter "Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation") and Japan Research Institute, Ltd. (President: Masahiro Fuchizaki, hereinafter "Japan Research Institute") are IBM Japan, Ltd. (Representative Director and President: Paul Yonamine, hereinafter referred to as “IBM Japan”), SCSK Corporation (Representative Director and President: Toru Tanihara, hereinafter referred to as “SCSK”), Advanced Media Co., Ltd. (Representative Director, Chairman and President: Kiyoyuki Suzuki, hereinafter referred to as “Advanced・In collaboration with ``Media''), IBM Watson Explorer (hereinafter referred to as Watson) (*1) will be made available to all call centers at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and will also be used to respond to inquiries from the bank's sales departments to headquarters. did.

In 2014, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation became the first Japanese bank to introduce Watson as a support tool for call center operators, and has continued to use it ever since. The voice recognition system "AmiVoice" (*2) converts the content of the conversation received into text in real time, and Watson presents the operator with possible answers to the inquiry from business manuals and Q&A collections, making it faster and more accurate. We have achieved your answer. In recognition of this initiative, in July 2016, we received the Customer Support IT Award Special Award at the Customer Support Award System sponsored by the Japan Association for Information Technology, a public interest incorporated association. In October of the same year, we made Watson available for use at all call center locations, achieving even higher quality responses to our customers.

Additionally, in December 2016, we began using the system to respond to internal inquiries regarding domestic credit operations, as well as to respond to and provide guidance to various inquiries from corporate customers. Furthermore, starting in February 12, we have gradually expanded its use to include internal inquiries and responses regarding services for individual customers, as well as inquiries in English regarding credit operations from overseas offices in Europe and the United States. Inquiries sent to headquarters from overseas offices in Europe and the United States, in particular, used to take time for the inquirer to receive a response due to time differences, but now Watson can also receive responses, contributing to improved productivity.

In the future, we will further expand the range of uses of Watson, which understands and learns a huge amount of natural language and supports more appropriate decision-making, and will work to further improve services for our customers, such as using it for cybersecurity. Masu.

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Japan Research Institute will work together with the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group to proactively utilize new IT technologies, aiming to become an advanced financial group with high corporate competitiveness while responding to the changing times. We will continue to strive to improve our services to our customers.

IBM Japan will support Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation's efforts to improve its services through the application of cognitive technology, leveraging the skills, knowledge, and cutting-edge technology it has cultivated around the world.

SCSK and Advanced Media, from the standpoints of an SI vendor and a manufacturer that provide voice recognition solutions, respectively, have introduced AmiVoice and realized the first real-time collaboration between AmiVoice and Watson. Going forward, we will leverage this track record to further strengthen our collaborative structure, contribute to the utilization of new IT technologies in the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, and promote the construction of next-generation call centers that connect customer voices and companies.

*1 IBM Watson Explorer

: Solutions that derive unique insights from large amounts of unstructured data and help users find and understand the information they need to make better decisions.

*2 AmiVoice

:Advanced Media's voice recognition solution that transcribes the full text of "voices" generated in call centers in real time and enables various uses. It is possible to improve the quality of response by monitoring NG words hidden in conversations and monitoring the text of calls, and it can be used for compliance measures by searching keywords in text, and for business support and VOC analysis by linking with AI solutions.

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